Posts Tagged ‘environmentalists’

Have My Feature Blog Posts, Overall Message and Published Articles Been Selling Out Environmentalists or Offering Suggestions for How to Change Failing Methods? What do you think? Agree or Disagree?

What Is the Best Way Forward? How Can We Begin to Attain Mainstream Buy-In to Collectively Reduce Carbon Use?

Expanded from an email originally sent to 45 neighbors 12-17-18

“Every Day Is Earth Day on My Ranch,” Indian Valley, Winter, Sierra Nevada, California, 2017 by David Leland Hyde.

Last July I wrote a blog post that turned out to be controversial, not because of what it contained, but because of how people interpreted it in relation to the rest of the contents of Landscape Photography Blogger, recently renamed Landscape Photography Reader, and people’s perception of the legacy of my father, pioneer conservation photographer Philip Hyde. Normally I find it a waste of time to draw attention to myself and whether people are understanding me or not, or whether they believe I do think or I should think exactly like my father. However, this is as good a time as any to clear up some misunderstandings for clarity and perspective as we move into the future direction of this platform and discussions here and elsewhere of why it matters.

The Hyde Legacy Mission Remains the Same

My mission statement did not change or waver during the last two years. It is available for all to read under the “Goals” tab above in the banner at the top of this page. Or to read it with one click now go to, “Hyde Fine Art Mission Statement.” My old and new blog readers and followers from all over the world have found and read it by the hundreds every day. I am mystified that those who made sniping comments or questioned my motives somehow missed it. This Mission/Goals statement is essentially a summary of Dad’s legacy, though there may be more nuances that come all along the way here at Landscape Photography Reader.

People sometimes ask me if I am happy, or if I am living someone else’s life, or they suggest that I ought to do whatever fulfills me. In some situations, these certainly are important concerns and suggestions. Following your bliss or your heart can be a useful idea or course correction if you have never done it. However, in this civilization, we all have perhaps followed our own desires a bit too much and not thought enough about the collective of all life on this planet, or about where we are headed and why. We have neglected, denied or ignored the big picture and pursued our individual happiness for many reasons, not least of which because we felt this easier to impact and manage.

My father’s goals in life were never about him. He was a man of service. What kind of service do you offer each day? How are you helping? What are you doing to make the world better? These are the kind of questions he tended to ask himself. His priorities were God, family, nature, and photography, in that order. My mother, self-taught naturalist Ardis King Hyde, filled in the social piece with her priorities being God, family, nature, and community.

Where the Controversy Started and the Value of Self-Evaluation

The blog post, “How Environmentalists Get in Their Own Way,” came out of a number of experiences I had in the last few years and some actions by a small few of my neighbors in the Northern Sierra in Plumas County. Even more controversial, was an opinion piece called, “In Defense of the Palmaz Family and Genesee Valley Ranch,” that I wrote for the local newspapers: Feather River Bulletin, Indian Valley Record, Chester Progressive, Portola Reporter, Lassen County Times and Westwood Pine Press with the online version appearing on Plumas News under a slightly different title.

“It seems to me that the good the Palmaz family is doing for the land far outweighs any impact from landing a helicopter,” said a prominent progressive property owner in Quincy, California, the Plumas County Seat, after he read the article and the 109 thoughts from readers at the end. “The comments get a little ugly, but they are a fascinating study in human psychology,” he said.

After I wrote the article for the local newspapers, a rumor began to circulate that I had “sold out environmentalists” by taking the position I did and pointing out the flaws in the logic of certain local activists in the newspaper. Sometimes people, including myself, have a hard time taking criticism, whether constructive or not. However, sometimes a review of current methods can help anyone fine-tune and improve. Self-evaluation can help you discover blind spots and areas where you may not be getting the results you want, making you far more effective and efficient in the long run.

Why and How Environmentalists Have Failed

Environmentalists individually and environmentalism as a movement, have both had some major successes, especially in the 1960s and 1970s when my father’s photography played a major role in the development of the modern environmental movement, and while land conservation enjoyed the most popularity and support from the general public. However, the same methods and approaches that worked then do not necessarily work now. More importantly, the methods that did NOT work then, work even less now. I suggest anyone who is serious about truly making a difference and not just appearing to do so enough to make yourself feel better, make a study of Dad and his associates, Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Wallace Stegner, David Brower, Martin Litton and many others and their methods and all other successful strategies for making real change and attaining significant impact. The last 20 years have seen environmental law weakened, water and air safety regulations undermined or revoked, the dismemberment of the Environmental Protection Agency down to a shadow of itself, not to mention little to no major advances or wins in the movement. Stopping the second half of the Keystone XL Pipeline through the US has been the largest environmental achievement of the new Millenium. Even major environmental leaders have declared the Death of Environmentalism or the Death of the Environmental Movement? Two other leaders, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger even wrote a follow-up book on the subject reviewed by the New York Timesand called Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Meanwhile, over 70 percent of Americans in polls say they care about environmental issues. Why the disconnect? What is missing? Can it all be blamed on corporate spin and criticism by Right-Wing politicians?

The Far Right Smear Campaign

Certainly, Right-Wing extremists have been smearing and labeling the green movement as the new Red, ever since the Reds were no longer a threat after the Berlin Wall fell and the U.S.S.R. disbanded. Right-Wing media and talk show hosts have been likening environmentalists to the devil, Satan and their followers. This tactic has worked to large extent. Still, there must be effective ways to remind conservatives across the spectrum that Republicans played a major role in the establishment of modern environmentalism. President Nixon and his cabinet oversaw the passing of most of the 20th Century’s most significant environmental laws. Beyond law though and even more fundamental, Republicans, Democrats, Independents and all others like to eat safe, unpoisoned food and drink clean water.

Even so, Environmentalists, including myself when I still called myself one, generally have failed to persuade society as a whole to mobilize regarding a number of disastrous environmental and human health issues, the foremost of these being Climate Change. Our politics have so become polarized and environmentalists have often taken positions just as extreme as their opponents that obtaining mainstream buy-in appears close to impossible regarding action to stave off the melting of the Polar Ice Caps. We need to get people more interested in how they can do more and why it matters, rather than vilifying various people and organizations and telling them they are wrong, especially when what they are doing may have been a way of life for many generations. Nobody is going to change overnight, especially if they are put down or marginalized. Think about it in your own life. Do you tend to want to change when someone tells you what you are doing is wrong?

While Out on the Land Photographing Ranches and Farms, I Ran Across A New Concept

One subsection of this I am currently making my focus for research and future publication is Agriculture. Despite ingrained beliefs among the anti-beef lobby that all meat is bad for the planet and that Industrial Agriculture is a major contributor to Climate Change, new and ongoing research is starting to show that small, ecological agriculture is the most effective way of counteracting the ills of Industrial Agriculture and feeding the whole world. Animal waste is not only one of our biggest problems and greenhouse gas contributors, it is also one of the best ways to regenerate soil. The seeds of the solution are within the problem.

I highly recommend that anyone who cares about keeping our Earth liveable for people and the other life forms on which we depend, anyone with an open mind and anyone who puts our continued future above any ideology such as environmentalism, veganism, and so on, if solutions are more important to you than maintaining your current world view exactly as it is, read the book, Defending Beef by Nicolette Hahn Niman. In Defending Beef, the author, an environmental lawyer and former vegetarian, not only makes the case that cattle can be raised sustainably, but that overall, depending on how they are managed, they can have a net positive impact on our atmospheric carbon problem by taking carbon out of the air and sequestering it in the ground. Cows are not only one of the best ways to rebuild our depleted soils, but they can be one of the best ways to slow down and possibly reverse Climate Change. This is not greenwashing, not Beef Industry hyperbole, but statistical fact backed up by studies and research from all over the world. One of the frontrunners of these innovations is Allan Savory, who wrote Holistic Management: A Common Sense Revolutions to Restore Our Environment, and explains his world-renowned system in his TED Talk, How to Fight Desertification and Reverse Climate Change.

A Recipe for Optimism and My Philosophy

Also, for anyone who has become pessimistic about the future of the world or who is afraid to slip into pessimism, I highly recommend reading The Upcycle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart for a fresh perspective on how radical innovation can change how we use everything so profoundly that it is possible we could eliminate pollution, repurpose waste and keep our water plentiful and pure. For more on how we can change not just policy, but our consciousness and thus have the biggest impact on healing the planet, I suggest the audio CD: Miracles for the Earth by Sandra Ingerman.

For those very few who have spread rumors and made fools of themselves by saying I have sold out environmentalists, here is your chance to find out what I really am doing, saying and writing on the subject and why it is being followed in over 70 countries:

Chiaroscurro, Sun Through Fog, Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, copyright 1964 by Philip Hyde. First published in "The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource," by Francois Leydet with photographs by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, in the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series.

After seeing Martin Litton’s feature articles in The Los Angeles Times protesting proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument, David Brower recruited the young journalist to join the Sierra Club and continue the fight against dam building and other wilderness degradation in earnest.

Martin Litton and Philip Hyde made the landscape photographs of Dinosaur National Monument that became the Sierra Club book, This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And Its Magic Rivers with introduction and chapter one by Pulitzer Prize novelist Wallace Stegner. The controversy over the dams in Dinosaur National Monument, along with the first quality images of the area brought home by Philip Hyde and eloquent arguments by Martin Litton in Sierra Club Board Meetings, prodded the Sierra Club Board of Directors to decide to expand the interests of the Sierra Club beyond California and the Sierra Nevada.

The battle over Dinosaur not only made the Sierra Club a national organization, but also brought the cause of conservation national recognition. A number of conservation groups including the Wilderness Society and others formed a coalition of organizations opposing the Dinosaur National Monument dams. The conservation ideals exemplified by visionaries such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir, were combined with new lobbying efforts, grassroots on location campaigning, full-page ads in national newspapers and other methods that became modern environmentalism.

The Dam Builders Reach For The Grand Canyon

“Post-War industrialists in league with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation found their high water mark when they reached for the Grand Canyon,” Philip Hyde explained in a 2004 interview. “World wide citizen action prevented Big Dam Foolishness from getting a foothold in the Grand Canyon. Dam builder’s influence declined from then on.” Today, there is a world-wide movement to remove dams on major rivers, but in the 1950s and 1960s, conservation groups did not yet have much power. David Brower, leader of the new environmental movement and Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and Martin Litton hatched a plan to stop the Grand Canyon dams. They organized a river trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. The river trip participants included the who’s who of the day in landscape photography, geology, ecology and other sciences and disciplines. Martin Litton acted as lead boatman, Francois Leydet joined the trip as a writer, Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde as photographers, David Brower as filmmaker, to mention only a few. Their creative efforts and scientific observations became the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book, Time And The River Flowing: Grand Canyon. The book went out to every member of Congress and with other written material circled the globe and caused a worldwide outpouring of support for saving the Grand Canyon.

Also on Martin Litton’s list of conservation successes was the making of Redwood National Park. The centerpiece of the redwoods campaign, the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource with text by Francois Leydet and photographs again by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, helped the Sierra Club establish its argument for a Redwood National Park between the California state parks along Redwood Creek where the largest redwoods remained rather than a Redwood National Park proposed by Save The Redwoods League that merely combined existing state parks. Read more on the Redwoods campaign and the making of The Last Redwoods with Martin Litton and Philip Hyde in future blog posts.

Martin Litton was the 185th known person to float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1955 and founded the company Grand Canyon Dories in 1971. He ran commercial river trips using small oar-powered wooden boats originally used for fishing in Oregon and known as drift boats, but adapted by Martin Litton for use in whitewater and renamed Grand Canyon Dories. Martin Litton wrote the introduction to a number of noted books on the Grand Canyon and other environmentally sensitive wilderness areas and national parks, as well as working as managing editor for Sunset Magazine. During his work for Sunset Magazine, Martin Litton used various made up names in print for his photo credits because Sunset Magazine did not want him to actively participate in controversial environmental campaigns.

At Age 94 Martin Litton Is Still Fighting For Redwoods

Though history has not given Martin Litton as much credit as others, at the present age of 94 he continues to work on various environmental campaigns and fly his Cessna 195. He even rowed a Dory through the Grand Canyon at age 90. Martin Litton held a seat on the Sierra Club Board of Directors from 1964 to 1973. He helped found the American Land Conservancy and served on its executive committee for 10 years. In 2005 he ran as a write-in candidate for the Sierra Club Board of Directors, but he did not win the election. His current focus is preventing the logging of Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees in Sequoia National Monument. See an excerpt from the recent film on Martin Litton. He still speaks regularly on conservation, often with outrage at the logging of the Giant Sequoia Trees:

The mission of the Forest Service is to get rid of all the nation’s forests so they can start over. Under the guise of removing hazardous trees, they are taking out all the dead trees that are serving as homes for woodpeckers and owls. Their credo is to remove trees that are dead, dying, or in danger of dying. That’s every tree in the world… I feel sorry for my grandchildren. The only true optimist is a pessimist. You have to realize how bad things are before you can improve them.

Stay tuned for excerpts from my fiery interview of Martin Litton in the next blog post in this series, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 3.” Also in future blog posts read more stories of Philip Hyde and Martin Litton working or traveling together: a river trip up the Klamath River, down the Colorado river, flying over the California Coastal Redwoods, through Grand Canyon National Park.

The Cascade Mountain Range, National Parks and Wilderness Areas Of The Northwestern U.S.

The Cascade Mountain Range, a string of volcanic peaks and vertically thrust rocky crags, runs from Northern California through Oregon and Washington and into Canada. Land battles in the 1950s and 1960s over the lush forests of the Cascade Mountains in the Northwestern United States, helped shape future strategy for wilderness conservation campaigns across the nation.

As the U. S. Forest Service and the timber industry, on one side, grabbed for more trees to mill, recreationists and environmentalists, on the other side, attempted to save their beloved woodlands, river valleys and rainforests from destruction. When enough public outcry supported the protection of an area, it became a National Park such as North Cascades or Olympic National Park. However, just obtaining wilderness status for many wild areas engendered a terrific political and often legal war.

The Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area became one of the many controversies of the 1960s. Mount Jefferson is Oregon’s second highest peak (10,249 feet) behind Mount Hood (11,497) and not to be confused with the Mount Jefferson in Montana, or in Utah, or the mountain bearing Thomas Jefferson’s carved likeness in North Dakota. Mount Jefferson of the Central Oregon Cascades is surrounded by plentiful lakes, steep raging rivers and lush river valleys riddled with gold and silver mining claims, cattle grazing and thick stands of mixed conifer trees.

In 1959, after conferring on strategy and partial funding with David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Philip Hyde hired mountaineer and wilderness guide Fred Behm as a horse packing guide. Fred Behm led Ardis and Philip Hyde by horseback pack trip into the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area. Philip Hyde made photographs for use by the Sierra Club and local Oregon environmental groups working to attain permanent wilderness designation or national park status for the Jefferson Wilderness Area.

U.S. Forest Service’s Controversial Redrawing Of Cascades Wilderness Area Boundaries In The 1960s

Mount Jefferson Primitive Area, one of the largest in Oregon, formed in 1930. It stretched across the Deschutes, Mount Hood, and Willamette National Forests. Each of these National Forests helped manage the primitive area. Lumbering slowed significantly during the Great Depression, but took off again during and after World War II. In the Willamette National Forest, the volume of logs cut more than quadrupled between 1945 and 1955 and continued to increase for decades. The Forest Service began to reclassify many primitive areas as either multiple use or permanent wilderness without any input from locals. Frequented by hikers, fishers and small boaters, Mount Jefferson Primitive Area had some of the highest recreation levels of any wilderness in the Northwest, second in Oregon only to the Three Sisters Wilderness to the south.

In his autobiography, In The Thick of It: My Life In The Sierra Club, Michael McCloskey wrote:

In the early 1960s, the Forest Service was using its administrative powers to decide how much land it wanted to put into its new wilderness system. Wilderness areas in this system would have carefully considered boundaries and would be permanently managed as wilderness, without roads or logging. In contrast, primitive areas, which had been set aside earlier under regulations of the 1920s, allowed some roads, had boundaries drawn with little study, and were only provisional in nature. In response to pressures to better protect primitive areas, the Forest Service had decided to either reclassify them as wilderness areas or to drop the provisional protection it had accorded them.

When reclassifying the Three Sisters Wilderness, the Forest Service dropped 53,000 acres from the wilderness area. After a 25 year struggle from grass roots activist groups and conservationists, Congress finally added 45,000 of these acres back into the Three Sisters Wilderness in 1978, part of which consisted of the west side of beautiful Waldo Lake.

U.S. Forest Service Preserves ‘Everything But The Trees’ In The Mount Jefferson Wilderness

The Mount Jefferson Primitive Area ran in a long, narrow strip along the spine of the Oregon Cascade Mountains with Mount Jefferson on the north end and a peak called Three Fingered Jack on the south. In the Oregon Cascade Mountains, most of the largest and thickest timber stands in the 1960s were below 3,500 feet in elevation. Unlike the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, the Mount Jefferson Primitive Area was mainly above 3,500 feet and did not contain as much valuable timber. Kevin R. Marsh explained in Drawing Lines In The Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas In the Pacific Northwest:

Since the crux of wilderness debates in the Northwest focused mainly on valleys below 3,500 feet, the creation of the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area out of the old primitive area focused on whether to protect from logging some of the lower forests outside the original boundaries…. In 1963, the Forest Service agreed to expand the boundaries outward east and south, adding more acreage to the protected area, but it stopped short of including the forests of the western valleys. In fact, the new boundaries would reduce the protection offered… lower-elevation forests contained in the existing primitive area and open them up to the timber sale program. By 1962, as the debate over proposed new wilderness boundaries continued, the Forest Service built a road and sold timber deep into the Whitewater Valley, close to the boundary of the primitive area…. Increasingly, the attention from all sides focused on Wildlands outside the existing boundaries of formally protected areas: the “de facto wilderness.” The Mount Jefferson debates reflected this changing aspect of wilderness debates throughout the country after passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. The Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area has not garnered much attention from historians and others concerned with wilderness in the United States, but the Mount Jefferson debates are important because they demonstrate a new emphasis on de facto wilderness lands and on struggles over the definition of ‘wilderness.’… The Obsidians, a Eugene, Oregon hiking club, joined five other groups, including the Oregon Cascades Conservation Council, to submit a proposal to increase the size of the area…

Michael McCloskey acted as legal council and Sierra Club adviser to those working to prevent land from being cut out and removed from within the final wilderness area boundaries. In the process he carefully explored the periphery of the primitive area to see how suitable the old boundaries were. He identified the practice of “leapfrog logging,” the Forest Service tactic of trying to define future boundaries by building access roads right up to the original primitive area boundary while passing by large sections of untouched timber. The presence of the road and logging at the end of it, blocked the land from potentially being designated as wilderness. Environmentalists led by Michael McCloskey applied their own techniques to build a case for expanding the existing wilderness. Michael McCloskey described the method himself:

The technique involved sampling the core values of the area (via a backpacking trip, a horse pack trip, or an overflight); driving every road to the edge of the wilderness area; looking at every peripheral development; evaluating competing values and alternative uses of the resources found there…. People valued these areas for many reasons: to experience wild country, to see mountain scenery, to walk through old-growth forests, to hunt and fish in less crowded areas, and to simply get away from civilization.

People were willing to fight for these wilderness values. Kevin R. Marsh explained one reason why:

The Forest Service roads and clear cuts deep in the Whitewater Creek valley were powerful examples of why wilderness activists focused so much energy on codifying a wilderness system created and maintained by Congress. In the long run… the Wilderness Act resulted in a massive increase in the acreage of land protected as wilderness in the United States…. Following that mandate, the Forest Service reexamined the Mount Jefferson area, the first primitive area in the Cascades to undergo review under the requirements of the Wilderness Act. Expanding wilderness protection into more valuable, lower-elevation forests, however, carried too much additional cost to the industry…. The conservationists proposal would reduce the available timber supply to the local economy by eleven million board feet annually, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield claimed, and ‘serious economic hardship could result….’ To add the forested areas proposed by conservationists would result in the loss of six hundred jobs in the local economy, regional forester Herbert Stone claimed. As a result, the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area, as approved by Congress in 1968, did not include the Whitewater Valley.

Even though the final boundaries of the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area did not include the Whitewater Valley, conservationists did succeed in persuading Congress to include other expansion areas such as Marion Lake and a few other tracts of undisturbed forest.

To learn about how conservation strategy in the Cascade Mountains had national impact and to discover more on how Cascade Mountain wilderness battles helped environmentalists refine their message into the Wilderness Act see the blog post, “The Oregon Cascades’ Impact On Conservation.” Also, discover more about the protection of the Cascades Mountains in blog posts to come, particularly the creation of North Cascades National Park and the protection of Glacier Peak Wilderness, both in the state of Washington.

Below is what I like and dislike about this new release. I highly applaud the book and offer some criticism too. Ansel Adams in the National Parks: Photographs from America’s Wild Places (Amazon) is a beautiful addition to anyone’s library. The look and feel of this new volume about Ansel Adams, pleases the senses and says quality all the way, yet the book is reasonably priced at only $40.00. Considering the book displays “more than 225 photographs” and the reader discovers “many rarely seen and 50 never before published” Ansel Adams photographs. These facts alone make it worth owning. The new binding of Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, Ansel Adams In Color and Ansel Adams In The National Parks: Photographs From America’s Wild Places are all similar in attractive design and style: block lettering on white covers with smaller photographs on front and back.

In Ansel Adams In The National Parks I was happy to find many Ansel Adams photographs I have never seen before. The far majority of his photographs of the national parks in the book are a supreme joy to discover. There are perhaps half a dozen or less that I thought were below the standards of what Ansel Adams himself would have published. Ansel Adams was very particular about which of his photographs he printed and published. He printed only about 900 images out of his 50,000 original negatives.

I liked the notes and letters between Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall and Beaumont Newhall, when they either traveled together or wrote to each other about Ansel Adams’ travels and photography on his Guggenheim to photograph the National Parks.

I also enjoyed reading darkroom black and white photographer John Sexton on printing Ansel Adams photographs in the 1970s.

It is always a treat to read Wallace Stegner. His essays are well-informed and well-argued. As good as his essays are, his fiction is even better. Why not use new essays rather than reprints of essays published in previous books about Ansel Adams? Plenty of high quality credentialed essayists would love the opportunity to write about Ansel Adams in the National Parks.

The essays in the back of Ansel Adams In The National Parks, sing, especially the last essay by William A. Turnage “Ansel Adams, Environmentalist.” William A. Turnage’s prose is lyrical as he praises and passionately gives tribute to his life-long friend and partner. The two essays by Richard B. Woodward, “Ansel Adams In The National Parks” on the travels of Ansel Adams, Nancy Newhall and Beaumont Newhall and “Ansel Adams and the Preservation of Wilderness,” each provide a well-written and fascinating short history lesson. In “Ansel Adams and the Preservation of Wilderness” Richard B. Woodward wrote:

As our sense of what happened yesterday or decades ago is often as muddled and contentious as our plans for the future, a mechanical process that provides more or less realistic evidence of the world as it once was can be of immense practical and political value…. Architecture historians in several European countries understood this vital function of photography soon after Daguerre took credit for inventing it in 1839. In France the government had already founded the Commission des Monuments Historiques in 1837 and assigned it to compile a list of old decaying medieval and Renaissance structures—cathedrals, parks, chateaus, villages—imperiled by neglect…. In 1851, the Commission selected five photographers—Edourd-Denis Baldus, Hippolyte Bayard, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, and O. Mestral—for an elite unite that operated under the name La Mission Heliographique. It was perhaps the first time, though by no means the last, that photographers were hired in a noble-minded effort to preserve valuable parts of the world, in this case a centuries-old heritage that France was in danger of forfeiting unless quick action was taken to save these crumbling and irreplaceable sites….

Richard B. Woodward continued with sections on how photographs helped protect Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone, and many other conservation causes all over the world. Then he wrote about Ansel Adams’ leadership in the transformation of photography and its establishment as an art form:

By organizing the exhibition Group f.64 in 1932—with Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and others—Adams became an eloquent spokesman for “straight photography” in San Francisco and far beyond….Finally no photographer except Stieglitz did more to win acceptance for photography as a fine art. In 1940, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York created a separate department of photography, the first in the world, Adams became one of its founding fathers. Without training as a scholar or curator, he was nonetheless instrumental in the rediscovery of Watkins, Jackson, and O’Sullivan. By extolling their achievements to Beaumont Newhall and others in the museum community, he helped to construct a nascent art historical continuum for landscape photography. His own international prominence as an artist toward the end of his life altered the material conditions for those choosing to take the medium in that direction. In the 1970s, prints by Adams became one of the pillars of an emerging market for photographs as an art collectible, for sale in galleries and auction houses. The select but not inconsiderable number of photographers lucky enough to earn a living today from sales of their prints have Adams to thank for proving this could be done. Despite an altered context and a newfound respect for photographers within the realm of contemporary art, his pictures remain basic to the photography market and show no sign of diminishing in prevalence twenty-five years after his death.

From Greenpeace press materials: After months of hearing from activists and shoppers like you about how important it is to stop destroying the oceans for profit, Trader Joe’s finally announced a plan to “green-up stores” and help put an end to destructive fishing practices.

Prior to this announcement, Trader Joe’s came in 17th out of the 20 stores evaluated in Greenpeace’s analysis of seafood sustainability policies at major supermarket chains. That was the worst ranking attained by any national chain.

For months, Greenpeace publicly campaigned to pressure Trader Joe’s to adopt sustainable seafood purchasing policies throughout all of their stores in order to help save the oceans. Trader Joe’s felt the heat from Greenpeace’s mock website (www.traitorjoe.com), relentless phone calls from supporters, thoughtful karaoke songs from shoppers and in-store demonstrations and questions to store managers from activists across the country.

Trading Destruction for Conservation

Trader Joe’s has removed many unsustainable products from its shelves, including the highly objectionable orange roughy that it sold for several years. Specifically, Trader Joe’s has announced that they will:

Offer only sustainable seafood in their stores by December 31, 2012.

Work with third-party, science-based organizations to establish definitions and parameters for addressing customer concerns about overfishing, destructive catch or production methods, and the importance of marine reserves.

Remove “red-listed” seafood from their shelves. Trader Joe’s stopped selling Chilean Sea Bass in 2005, Orange Roughy in July of 2009, and Red Snapper in March of 2010.

Provide accurate information on all seafood labels, including species’ Latin names, origin and catch or production method.

Use their buying power to leverage change in the seafood industry.

Greenpeace is hopeful that Trader Joe’s will continue implementing a comprehensive sustainable seafood purchasing policy to ensure they have a road map for staying green long into the future.

Consumers Demand Sustainable Seafood

In talking with environmentalists, activists and avid seafood shoppers Greenpeace discovered a common link–they all want sustainable seafood in supermarkets and are willing to speak up for the oceans. Greenpeace is poised to release the fourth edition of their supermarket scorecard, Carting Away the Oceans. The report is updated several times a year based on an analysis of sustainable seafood policies and practices among major retailers. The Trader Joe’s announcement and previous announcements from Target and Safeway are sure to shake up the rankings and raise the bar. Weigh in on fish farming practices yourself Click Here and find out more about how to effect National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aquaculture policy Click Here.